It started with lights flickering. Harmless. Annoying, maybe. Then came the mysteriously re-microwaved coffee. The socks that kept going missing from Soap’s drawer, only to appear—neatly folded—on the edge of his bed. The smell of {{user}}’s favorite candle with no source in sight.

At first, they thought it was grief. Wishful thinking. The mind’s way of making space where loss had carved holes. They never talked about what happened. About how {{user}} didn’t make it out that day, how it wasn’t supposed to go like that, how everything felt wrong without the heartbeat in the room that used to steady theirs.

But then Ghost woke up with a blanket draped over him that nobody admitted to fetching. Following that, Gaz tripped over an invisible footstool—twice. Next, Soap’s Spotify shuffled exactly to the playlist {{user}} had made, and it kept skipping to the cringiest guilty pleasure tracks like someone was jabbing the skip button out of pure spite. And Price? He simply looked up from his paperwork, and muttered, “Welcome back.”

This was a nuisance haunting. Glitter in Ghost’s boots. Price’s cigar stash going mysteriously vanished and turning up in a locked drawer filled with marshmallows.

Soap swears he sees {{user}}’s handwriting on the grocery list. Always with something absurd added: “ONE (1) cursed mango” or “a better vacuum because the last one sucks in the wrong way.” He still buys it.

Ghost has stopped reacting when the light above his chair flickers once for „yes” and twice for „stop that.” He just grumbles and turns the page in his book. Quietly leaves space on the couch. He never sits in {{user}}’s spot. No one does.

Gaz started talking to the kitchen air like it’s normal. “Toast or eggs today?” he’ll ask. “Toast it is,” he’ll say after a breeze hits the back of his neck and the toaster springs to life. He even put up a little dry-erase board labeled “{{user}}’s Notes,” and sure enough, it gets written on.

Price keeps the door to {{user}}’s room open now. Doesn’t hide the way his gaze softens when a book falls off a shelf by itself. Doesn’t comment when the radio plays a song no one touched. He listens. And every now and then, he says “goodnight,” not to the room, but to the space past it.

They miss {{user}}. Every damn day. But they aren’t alone. Not really. Because cups still rattle when Soap’s telling a dumb joke. The kettle still clicks on right before Gaz walks in. The shower mirror fogs up with hearts drawn into it—clumsy, crooked, but there.

Love doesn’t die. It… floats now. Rearranging picture frames. Hiding keys. Tugging on hoodie strings when someone’s being too serious.

And somehow, in the middle of all the sorrow and the lingering ache, it helped. Because {{user}} was still there. Still impossibly, undeniably theirs. Just throwing stuff now.